


When the Night Is Over

by sdwolfpup



Series: Strange Trails [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, As you do, F/M, Obsession, but brienne is too, in a day, jaime is a mess, two messes falling in love, we just don't get to see it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24137923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sdwolfpup/pseuds/sdwolfpup
Summary: By the stars above, I know we were in love / I have only 'til the night is over
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Strange Trails [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1741861
Comments: 55
Kudos: 174





	When the Night Is Over

**Author's Note:**

> I'd been wanting to write a JB fic inspired by the Lord Huron song of the same name for some time, and when eryiscrye requested "24 (literally bumping into each other au)" for a short fic tropes meme on Tumblr, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally do it. This is a more deeply obsessive romance than I normally write, but I had fun doing it. I was trying to capture the feeling of the song.

He lost her in the humid Volantis night, some time after the sweat had dried sticky on their bodies, but before he'd woken to beg her to stay. The air was thick and grasping when he burst out of the cold hotel lobby, half-dressed and wild to find her, his heart a drumbeat in his chest. But it was night and the streets were packed with tourists loud and laughing like gulls, and she was nowhere to be seen. 

Jaime had come to Volantis to get lost himself, to escape his miserable family and reputation and begin again as whatever the fuck he could find before the last of his money and time ran out. He'd spent his way quickly through even the enormous amount of dragons he'd had, mostly on his fancy hotel room and exquisite meals, each one of them savored alone. The food here was rich with spices and creams, every bite dripping into his mouth whether it was roasted fish or grilled vegetables. The tastes of Volantis laid thick on the tongue, against the skin, a city of sumptuous desire, and Jaime should not have been surprised to find that desire made flesh, a pale, glowing beacon against the reds and golds of the city. 

It had only been that morning when he'd stepped out of this same lobby, his head turned to the left, her body slamming into him from the right. Her phone went crashing to the ground, the loud crack of the breaking glass and plastic muffled by the dense Volantis air. 

“Shit!” she'd said first, and if she hadn't spoken, if the phone hadn't looked so ordinary and broken on the ground, Jaime might have thought the whole day, the passionate night, a dream. 

Now, he frantically looked left down the busy streets where she'd been headed, then to the right, the direction from which she'd been coming. Would she return to where she had been? Or continue on to where she'd been going? He didn't know. He knew almost nothing about her, though what he did know were the only things that mattered: her first name, the red of her lips opening wide when she laughed, the way her pale, muscled stomach trembled when he nipped at her thighs, the absolving blue of her eyes as she listened to his sins. Jaime gripped his hair with his one good hand and listened for her voice, or perhaps some sign from the gods that would point him the right way. 

“Watch where you're going, you great beast,” Jaime had said when he'd recovered his breath after their collision. He'd thought some arrogant man had slammed into him, but when he turned and was caught in her eyes, he'd fallen silent. 

“Watch where _you're_ going,” she'd snapped, her skin a pink and red checkerboard in the heat, populated with a hundred armies' worth of freckles. 

“You ran into me,” he'd managed around his useless tongue. It had not been useless later that night, when she'd been spread before him on the bedsheets already wet with their desire. 

She had snatched up her phone from the ground and made a noisy, dismayed cry before holding it in his face. “You broke it!” 

“You dropped it,” he'd snapped back.

“What am I going to do without my phone?”

“Everyone has problems, sweetheart, no one cares about yours.” 

“You owe me a new one,” she'd insisted, her towering figure planted firmly on the sidewalk, her long-fingered hands gripping wide hips. Jaime had held them even more tightly later that night, when she was bent over in front of him and crying out his name. Did she have his marks on her even now, wherever she'd gone? 

_Fuck_ , she was _gone_ and she'd taken his soul with her. He headed left into the future from which their accident had delayed her that morning, and, shirtless and bare-footed, he searched the streets of Volantis for her in the night. 

She was tall and blonde and shining and he saw her mirage in the glass of every closed storefront he passed. A trick of neon and streetlights, of his own vanity staring back at him with eyes white around the rims. 

Jaime had taken her to buy a new phone. Not because he believed he should, or even as a kindness, but because he'd been here for weeks and his money was almost gone and he was bored and desperate and her lips were full and wide and angry below her crooked nose. If families had had emotions, anger would have been the Lannisters'. 

They had gone to the right, he remembered now as he walked past a clothing store, a gift shop, a jeweler's. Jaime thought he saw her in the window there, but it was only a pair of sapphire earrings glinting in a passing car's headlights. A pale imitation, but already she was more figment than real in his memory. 

The streets to the right had held more of the same and none of it a place that would sell her a phone. It had been hot and her linen sundress had stuck to her chest, her small, round breasts outlined like a sculptor had captured them in living marble. She and Jaime had stopped at yet another corner with a decision to make about where to go next when she'd caught him staring at her. 

Her nipples had pebbled under his gaze, and he'd known she'd be his before the night was over. 

“What am I going to do?” she'd asked. 

“Have lunch with me,” he'd said. 

Jaime hadn't even known her name then, and she hadn't known his, but she'd said yes. They'd walked down to the docks and found a shack on the water that sold fish so fresh it was gasping back in the kitchens. Between her appetizers and his paying the bill, Brienne had told him her name, that she was in Volantis on a getaway vacation, and that she was on her own. 

“You shouldn't tell strange men that you're alone,” he'd warned her. A flush of pink again, then blue eyes meeting his. 

“I'm not afraid of you,” she'd murmured, deep and promising. Her voice had sunk into his marrow and he'd known it would not be so easily scoured from him when she was gone. 

Gone. Jaime was at the docks once more, the ocean wide and black and mated with the night sky in an infinite line on the horizon. Clouds were rolling in now, he could feel the change against his bare skin. No one seemed to care about him shirtless and wandering, the asphalt still warm against his heedless feet. His need had made him a ghost in the world, doomed to vanish with the sunrise unless he found her.

Jaime continued back into downtown Volantis on his hunt for a flash of her pale body. The crowds were thinning with the late hour and the oncoming storm. He crossed the long curving arch of a bridge that reminded him of her back bowed as she shook and clenched around him. 

After lunch, they had meandered around the city, the photo negative of Jaime's lonely, wretched journey now. Brienne had taken his hand when they'd crossed the river he stood by here in the dark. Her name burbled from its depths. 

If he didn't find her, he didn't know what he would do. He had been lonely too long already. 

Even at night, Volantis was all slick heat, and the first cool breezes blowing in with the storm made Jaime shiver. He had to find her soon. 

He'd taken Brienne back to his hotel room. He hadn't asked and she hadn't questioned, they'd just gone together in unspoken agreement. It had been dinner time, and he had feasted on her tongue, gotten drunk between her legs. Her body had been long and undulating against his sheets, a pale, powerful wave crashing over him. Brienne had hooked her arm around his neck and told him her dreams with a casual intimacy that had cleaved his heart. He had skimmed his hand down her body until all the hairs were trembling. She'd ridden him until they were drenched with sweat. His bath had been big enough for them both, and with her cradled against his chest, Jaime had told her why he was in Volantis, what he was escaping and why he would never return. 

“What did you hope to find here?” she'd asked, tilting her head to kiss the line of his jaw. 

“You,” he'd whispered into her ear. 

Lightning sliced overhead, and the clouds that had swarmed in thick and menacing during the night let loose in a downpour. Dawn rose gray on the horizon as Jaime stood in the middle of the empty street and let the rain wash everything away. 

The night was over, and she was gone with the sun. A horn blared, and Jaime met the furious eyes of the driver with his blank stare. The man blanched and swerved at the last minute, throwing water onto the sidewalk, cursing Jaime as he roared by. 

Jaime trudged through the rain back to his hotel, moving by instinct rather than with purpose. The rain lessened a little as he neared, and the gray clouds were already thinning, letting in the first pink rays of sunlight. Storms passed as quickly as affairs in Volantis. 

Head down, bare feet icy cold and aching, he almost missed hearing his name. “Jaime,” she said again, and he looked up abruptly, cast around in desperation, certain he'd lost all sense now and was hearing her voice on the wind. 

There, on the street to the right, was Brienne. She was soaked through, clutching a duffel bag to her chest. She neared, her eyes scanning him from head to toe and back again, worried and kind. 

“You're here,” he breathed. 

Brienne swallowed and nodded, fast. “My flight home was this morning. It's already gone. I thought I'd be gone with it.”

Jaime touched her cheek with shaking fingers. It was wet with rain. “Why did you stay?”

“You,” she said, and curled her hand around his neck, pulling him in. 

The night was over, but the day had just begun.


End file.
